‘Have you taken your shot?’ you ask me suddenly.
‘Mm? Yeah,’ I say, and show you my insulin pouch as proof.
‘That’s probably enough potassium for a while though, isn’t it?’ you say, pointing at the amount of tomato on my bouillabaisse.
Mal can’t help but give me a look. An under-the-thumb kind of look.
‘Are you sure you don’t want a spare rib, fella?’
‘Probably not a good idea, cheers. Not too good for me.’
‘Ah, whoever ate anything because it was good for them, eh?’
I hear you sigh beside me, and I pray that you keep it all in. Your head’s down now and I can tell you’re concentrating on getting through this.
‘Do ribs freak you out then?’ asks Mal.
You pause and contemplate a while, and I try to catch your eye to remind you of why we’re here. Building bridges, remember? For a sustainable and friendly future? But you won’t look at me.
‘Not particularly.’
‘How’s the chicken?’ I ask Laura.
‘Bit dry,’ she says, graphically.
Makes me feel faintly queasy, so I get on with what I’m eating. We can make it through to coffee if no one says anything too–
‘Did Ivo tell you our news?’ you say.
‘No …’ says Laura, looking up all interested.
‘It’s not that,’ I say.
‘No, we’re looking at getting a place together,’ you say. ‘My contract’s up in three months, and you’re technically at your mum’s still, aren’t you?’
Mal drops a rib to his plate, and looks at me, frowning deeply.
‘Well — what about our flat, man?’
‘What flat?’
‘I’ve got a place lined up for us, we said we’d — ah, Jesus.’
‘Sorry — I didn’t — I didn’t know you were going to go ahead and do anything.’
‘I’ve put two hundred down on that, man. Two hundred you’ve lost me.’
‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think — that was going anywhere.’
‘Yeah, well.’
We fall to an awkward silence, save the percussion of cutlery on crockery; even the people at other tables don’t seem to have much noise to make.
‘So — where are you thinking of staying?’ asks Laura.
‘Somewhere up close by the hospital,’ you say. ‘At first, anyway. We can always try a few short contracts, see what’s best.’
We eat on, subdued, with Mal sitting back on his chair legs, pointedly chewing.
‘So, how does it feel, as a woman then?’ says Mal. ‘Being made out of the rib of a man?’
Laura frowns. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Adam and Eve,’ I say, a little warily. ‘Eve’s made out of Adam’s rib.’
‘Oh,’ she says, squinting to somehow summon up the memory. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Old Cecil Alexander taught us that at Sunday School.’ She turns to you. ‘He was the vicar at Mum’s church before Mal’s dad took over.’
‘Oh,’ you say.
‘Is it true then that men have one less rib?’
‘Yep,’ says Mal.
‘No,’ you say. ‘Men and women both have twelve pairs.’
Mal draws in a breath and raises amused eyebrows at me.
‘So how does that make you feel,’ he says, ‘being a tasty offcut?’
I think you’re not going to answer. I’m hoping you’re not going to answer. ‘Well, it’s not the best story, is it?’ you say.
‘No? You don’t like this bloke being ripped open, and one of his ribs being snapped off, with all the jelly bits hanging off and dripping on the ground?’ He takes another rib and starts stripping the tacky marinated meat down with his fingertips. ‘And that’s what a woman is.’
‘Well, not only that,’ you say, ‘but then she goes on to ruin the whole of human existence. Let’s hear it for the girls!’
‘We do get it a bit hard in that myth, don’t we?’ says Laura.
‘But it’s not a myth though, is it?’ says Mal. ‘It did really happen.’
‘No it didn’t,’ says Laura, girlishly.
He tears a strip off another rib, and forces us all to await his explanation.
‘The story had to come from somewhere, didn’t it?’ he says, pointing at you with his stripped rib. ‘So it came from women’s bodies, and all their weaknesses. And if it didn’t have any truth to it, it would have died out centuries ago. Here’s a man, and here’s a woman, and the other is the servant of the one. That’s what people feel. That’s biologically true.’
‘It must be,’ you say.
Oh, this is all going horribly.
‘It’s nature,’ he says drawing a circle in the air, using the rib bone as a pointer.
‘Tell that to all the women who come into the hospital after a botched late-term abortion because they’re expecting a girl.’
I flash you a look. Do we really need to go there?
Sustainable and friendly future?
Yeah?
Again Mal raises his eyebrows at me, but I won’t look at him.
Silence settles once more between us all, filled only by the gingerest of clinks of forks reluctantly hovering over flesh.
Maybe we should skip dessert.
‘What are you doing?’
I look up to see that Mal has jabbed his rib bone into your risotto.
‘What? I wanted to try a bit.’
‘Mal, she’s vegetarian,’ says Laura.
‘Oh, so what? It’s not got any meat on it, has it?’
‘Look,’ you say, standing, ‘I’m going to go, all right? I’m not feeling too good. There’s twenty quid for my share.’ You turn to me. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Here we — here we go,’ says Sheila, catching the telephone trolley on the door frame and stopping up short. She unhooks it with a wiggle and wheels it into the room. ‘It’s old-school telephony for us, I’m afraid. I’ll pop that there. Now, I’ve given him the number, and he said he was going to leave it about ten minutes and then ring.’
I look up at her and nod in reluctant acknowledgement. All of this, reluctant.
‘Then it’s up to you, lovey. Pick it up, or don’t.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen,’ she says. ‘It’s none of my business, but I think it’s really good you’ve agreed to this. I know it might seem a bit silly, accepting a phone call from someone sitting fifty yards away in the car park, but — well, if you’re willing to even think about being a bit flexible, well, that’s real character in my book. That’s real strength.’
I smile an administrative smile. I can’t do any more.
‘I’ll leave you be,’ she says.
She tidies herself out of the room, pulling the door softly shut behind her, and as soon as the light of her departure has shifted and settled in the frosted glass, the phone begins to ring. Cheap electronic chirrup. Annoying. I look at it for a moment, but the instinct is too strong. I can’t let that noise carry on, troubling the other patients.
I let it go on.
Chirrup-chirrup.
I pick up the receiver.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello, mate.’
‘Hello, Kelvin.’
‘How you doing?’
The habitual first question, not worth answering.
‘You wanted to speak.’
‘Sorry, mate, it feels a bit weird talking from a car park. A bit Cold War spy.’
‘They still want me to see Mal.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m not going to, Kelv.’
‘No.’
An awkward pause.
‘I wanted to tell you the stuff that no one else is saying,’ he says.
He pauses again. I know he wants me to say something, help lubricate his way. But he can work for this. I don’t need to lift a finger.